November 2009
17 posts
Lawrence Frank, Swamped No More -- The Sports... →
In November of 2004, I found myself eating a cheeseburger at the New Jersey Nets’ practice facility in East Rutherford with coach Lawrence Frank. He was prepping his chronically depleted team for their season opener against the Shaq-led Miami Heat. It was election night, and eventually he clicked from game tape to CNN. Frank watched for a minute and then had a question. “Now the...
“In recent years the word ‘‘laowai’‘ has begun to stir up controversy within the...”
– ‘Ang Mo’ in Singapore and ‘Lao Wai’ or ‘Gweilo’ in China - Offensive to Westerners? - Singapore Travel and Expats - Zimbio
“More than all that, I’d discovered how quickly the vision of total reinvention...”
– Evan Ratliff via Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened | Vanish | Wired.com
Rachel is a 17 year old girl in China
Nathan: rachel's reply to me saying the food in china is good (she was complaining that china sucks):
yeah it may seem good for a traveller..the food?well sometimes it may be damn shitty...u missed the chance to try them..i mean the shitty ones.the easiest access to that is to go to a highschool s dining hall then u ll know why ppl describe food with shit here
N: i guess cafeteria food is a universal problem
R: oh really?its a shitty universe..
me: tell me
what's the meaning of life
Kevin: i've told you this before
2 tiered philosophy
on the base layer
the universe is meaningless
there is no right
no wrong
me: this is good
go on
Kevin: everything is meaningless
ok?
that said, as fairly conscious beings we want to have something resembling reason to live
i use this comparison
say you got jumped, blindfolded, and drugged
next thing you know you're shoved out of a helicopter or something and you wake up in the middle of a huge body of water
in all directions all you can see is water
and you have no idea what way the helicopter went
so, basically, you're fucked
that said, you want to live
so you gotta decide what to do
and thus you construct a reason to go in one direction
maybe you think the water looks shallower in one way
or you think those clouds in the sky are clumping around an island mountain
whatever
who knows?
you just come up with a reason to go in some particular way
me: ok different but related question
Kevin: and you run with it
hang on
i think humanity is like that
me: sorry
Kevin: we're in a massive ocean
with no fucking clue what is going on
but we need to have SOME direction
so we create a fake island, or fake shallow water, or whatever
to give us that hope
and those fallacies are the basis for social contracts
fake morality
fake truth
me: social constructs?
like spelling?
idiot
Kevin: no, fucker
CONTRACTS
me: haha
D.C. sniper's execution met with grief, bitterness... →
Bob Meyers, whose 53-year-old brother, Dean, was shot dead while pumping gas in Virginia, called Tuesday’s execution surreal.
“Watching the life be sapped out of somebody intentionally was very different and an experience I’d never had,” he said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
“I’d watched my mother die of natural causes, but that was very...
“I showed my wife a segment [of a failed novel] that I had honed down and she...”
– Kazuo Ishiguro via How Junot Diaz, Kazuo Ishiguro and Orhan Pamuk Write - WSJ.com
Nathan: you're probably ready to start racing then
nybma.com/news
me: dudez, they'll laugh me off the track
first of all, my bike is not cool
second, i get tired pretty quick
i like to coast
Nathan: THERE'S NO TRACK
me: ok be cool
i realize that.
Nathan: TAKE IT TO THE STREETZ
me: haha
Nathan: when you beat them on your uncool bike you'll be cinderalla
me: good point
i'm pretty
Nathan: or the ugly duckling
i got third place in pgh on my uncool bike
after the race they congratulated me
and then told me that i should remove my kickstand
cause it wasn't cool
“I don’t want to die and then hear everybody say, ‘Oh, there goes one...”
– Pedro Martinez via Specter of Sabathia hangs over Game 6 participants - MLB - CBSSports.com Baseball
“I remember staring at the computer screen—light green letters on...”
– Derrick Jensen via Hacker News | How to Drop Out
